Renting a holiday home may be the best way to find a bargain in 2010, with property rental sites being flooded with cottages, villas and apartments as second-home owners feel the credit-crunch pinch.

"We've seen an increase of 25% in homes advertised on our site in the last year," says Kate Stinchcombe of holidaylettings.co.uk. "The biggest growth area is the UK – we now have 6,000 properties, which has doubled since this time last year – but second-home owners everywhere are realising that the houses that sit empty for much of the year can actually make them some money."

Sites such as holidaylettings.co.uk, holiday-rentals.co.uk and ownersdirect.co.uk are increasingly popular with consumers, as booking direct with the villa owner cuts out the additional costs imposed by a tour operator. The sites charge on average £200 for owners to market their properties, with an average income of around £10,000 a year.

"It's been an extraordinary year," agrees Erica Chang, general manager of Owners Direct. "We were nervous about hitting our targets at the beginning of the year, but we've seen an increase in listings of 15%, with non-Euro destinations such as Croatia and India being particularly strong." The increase in properties available in certain areas has meant that prices are coming down, although high demand for UK holidays in 2009 meant that domestic prices stayed unchanged.

"It's places like Spain, Portugal and Turkey, where there's been huge recent development of holiday homes, where prices are dropping simply because there are so many properties available," says Stinchcombe. "But the best option has to be Florida. We have four-bedroom houses on the site, really big, with a swimming pool and just half an hour away from Disney for £400 per week."